Dear Andy,
We’ve never met – but I wanted to offer you some free advice on how to cope with No 10 Downing Street.
You may be tempted to dismiss it, just because I spent a little under six years as Director of Politics and Communications for David Cameron. But given the shocking fact that you are likely to be this country’s seventh Prime Minister in a decade, I really want you to succeed.
Experience tells me you have two significant advantages going into No 10.
The first is charm. You have a calm, likeable manner – and that should mean people will give you a fair hearing. But you’ll soon lose all that goodwill, unless you can set out a clear plan and start delivering on it at pace.
That plan needs a story – a clear account of what is happening, why, and who it’s for. Your predecessor failed largely because he didn’t seem to have a plan – and if he did, he obviously didn’t communicate it effectively.
Your second advantage is that the received wisdom is that you lack intellectual firepower and are too much of a people pleaser. Oddly, that is good news. It’s far better to walk in underestimated and surprise on the upside than the reverse.
But here’s my worry – so far you’ve done more to confirm people’s doubts than defy them. In January, you told the Institute for Fiscal Studies the country should no longer be “in hock” to the bond markets.
Then in April you floated breaching the Chancellor’s fiscal rules. You sounded so sure of yourself – but it was soon clear you didn’t really grasp the implications of what you were saying, until someone pointed out your mistakes, and you blinked immediately.
Anyone who understands how Governments borrow money knows that even Presidents of the United States have been forced to bow to the bond markets’ power. As Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville said, when he dies he wants to “come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody”.
Then came the WASPI women. The same pattern. Strong words of support at a hustings – and then, within about a day, serious compensation ruled out, with cut-price bus passes offered instead. You can see my point – talk is cheap, but action has a cost one way or another.
And there will be endless more intimidating figures reminding you of political and fiscal reality. Treasury officials will be quick to point out that we now spend around £110 billion a year just servicing our debt – more than the entire defence budget. Defence chiefs will insist that your first job is to protect the country, and that without finding significantly more money than Keir Starmer did, we will be in severe danger. Labour backbenchers will tell you they don’t like the idea of cutting welfare to pay for defence – even though it is spiralling ever upwards.
I could labour the point, but you’ll soon discover that the great political cliché is true: To govern is to choose. When you choose, you will disappoint people – often the very ones who cheered you in.
And the moment you walk through that black door, the choices hit you with the speed and force of a tsunami. Prime Ministers are asked to make endless decisions every day. Most will never be noticed – unless they go wrong. But if you duck them, the machine gums up fast, and your famous charm will wear very thin.
The same discipline applies abroad. You will face the tightrope of negotiating your relationship with President Trump. Siren voices will tell you to come over all Hugh Grant in Love Actually – telling him what’s what. You need to ignore them – working out the north star of your country’s interests, the same one that should guide everything else, and navigating accordingly. That doesn’t mean kow-towing, it does mean being a grown-up.
Pick your team carefully, you need loyal people who are willing to tell you the unvarnished truth. That means being thick-skinned – because those people need to deliver home truths, or everything will crumble. Ask yourself – are you cut out to be that boss?
And go early, go big – or you might as well stay in Manchester. Any honeymoon is shorter than anyone admits – measured in weeks, not months. The habits you set in the first hundred days are the ones the country comes to expect. Waste them proving you can be liked, and you’ll spend the rest of your time wishing you’d used them to show you could lead.
Above all, you cannot lean on warm words about values and ideals. You simply must accept reality.
The good news is that there is a gap in the market for a leader prepared to level with people: “I know it’s tough, but we have to get a grip, or things get tougher still.” Fill that gap.
None of this is a counsel of despair. Your charm is real. The opening is real. People are crying out for someone who will level with them and then deliver. But the country cannot afford another prime minister who can campaign but can’t govern – and mistakes being liked for leadership and talk for a plan.
So – show us your plan (you do have one, don’t you?) Get your story straight. Make the right choices. Hold your nerve.
If you can do all that, you’ll deserve to win the next election. I might even vote for you.
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